1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the design and development of communities, and in particular, to an analytical method for designing a community facility that improves the educational, environmental, ecological, and economic aspects of a community.
2. Related Art
Communities throughout the United States, and especially in Appalachia, are under unprecedented levels of stress of many types of both internal and external origin and causes. Many of the cities and communities were founded along streams and rivers because of water transportation and natural resources availability. Today, many of those reasons have disappeared and the rivers are so severely polluted they are looked upon negatively as a liability rather than an asset. However, they still have huge undeveloped potential. Therefore there is a need for a method that helps: restore river cities and communities; mitigate environmental problems; restore rivers; and improve the use of rivers as a valuable resource.
The issues or principal controlling variables effecting the improvement of a community are interdependent and must be appropriately considered as described below:
Educational systems are increasingly burdened by constraints in discipline, homework assignments, competing time for sports, teacher availability and qualifications, legal, security, and many other issues, in addition to funding problems, that are compounded to render the classical, single-purpose, one-dimensional institutions inadequately effective in their missions. Vocational schools, colleges and universities are devoted to providing educations in increasingly narrower, and highly specialized, fields. The child or young adult may emerge from all of these classical educational institutions with missed opportunities for learning, assimilating and understanding many important aspects of the world they inhabit. Likewise, as our world changes, adults have limited opportunities for certain forms of education, especially in participation with their children as a family affair. Also, fewer students are pursuing careers in science and engineering.
The economies of small and large communities alike today are being threatened by internal and external forces heretofore nonexistent. The conditions for small business incubation and growth are being destroyed by many factors acting in concert to threaten the foundations of America. The internal thresholds of bonds, permits, liability, insurance, environmental, legal, taxation, financial, and other barriers, including the internal expertise and number of startup employees required, to name only a few, have exceeded the feasibility for small business creation, much less survival. In addition, the economic sap is being drained by foreign or world-wide corporations mining the manufacturing plants, technologies, jobs and even money as profits, to foreign bases. Furthermore, the small hardware, grocery, drug store and other small businesses of a distributed nature historically providing great stability and security to communities are being eliminated due to the above named reasons, and due to mergers and single, super-stores with world-wide markets, competitive and monopolistic advantages. With only one, or very few, all-in-one food, hardware, clothing and other necessity suppliers in the community, the economic stability, security, and independence of the entire community is threatened. Self-sufficiency has been eliminated. Even food gardens, and home-based food preservation and storage methods have disappeared, and been replaced by the local super grocery store that delivers food from around the world. Collectively, our national security and stability is thus being undermined and threatened, not by bombs and war, but by economics and lack of infrastructure industries for self-sufficiency, as our economies become more superficial and internal, service-industry based.Environmental issues of air, land and water pollution are of major concerns in most communities and not only threaten our natural resources security, but burden the economies and place often unsurmountable constraints upon businesses and industries upon which the communities were founded and depend upon for their very existence. Coupled with these issues are additional permitting, legal, and numerous other constraints that further negatively impact all aspects of living within a community. Ecosystems and habitats within a watershed are still vital to our food chain, water resources, recreation, and many other aspects of life in our communities, including overall quality of life. Greater public awareness, knowledge and understanding, and participation in environmental and ecological issues in a holistic manner is needed.Research of all types on the environment, ecosystems, economies, educational systems and other topics is routinely conducted by academic and government institutions, usually without any public participation, knowledge of it, or understanding of the results or implications. The institutions usually are not “public friendly”, engaging, or receptive to the general public and the results of their activities are usually published in some esoteric journal and filed in some archive of remote public access.
These specific issues, along with many others, have numerous things in common. In fact, they are coupled together, or interdependent in a large number of very significant ways. Yet, our country's structure and method or means of dealing with these issues is largely of a single, one-dimensional institutional approach, using narrowly focused and single mission institutions of education and government. As is well known in engineering, when only one variable is independently adjusted at a time, for a system that is governed by many interdependent variables that must be appropriately adjusted simultaneously and in harmony, a satisfactory solution is unattainable, and can in fact lead to system instability.
The issue is then, “What can be done to counter all of these negative forces and pressures simultaneously acting upon and within our cities and communities to achieve better solutions and results?” Thus, there is a further need for a method that simultaneously combines the issues of education, economic development, ecosystem activities, environmental issues, research activities, and recreational and entertainment activities of a community, and the interdependency of these issues in the design, profiling, evaluation, and configuration of a community facility.